"Bob Dylan Pushed Me Past My Comfort Zone”: The 13X Grammy Winner Behind The Big Lebowski Soundtrack

Key Takeaway

Deliberately put yourself in rooms where you are not the most skilled person. T-Bone Burnett says he aimed to be “the worst musician in every band” because stronger collaborators raised his standards and accelerated learning. Today, identify one stretch environment—a peer group, class, critique session, or collaboration—and contribute before you feel fully ready. Pair that discomfort with careful listening: observe how skilled people work, then apply one technique in your next practice session.

Episode Overview

Guy Raz speaks with 13-time Grammy winner T-Bone Burnett about his path from Fort Worth guitar obsessive to producer, songwriter, and acclaimed film-music collaborator. Burnett explains how mentors and demanding creative rooms pushed him past stage fear, why deep listening is central to producing, and how writing for others unlocked a more prolific and optimistic late-career creative phase.

Full Transcript

Transcript of "Bob Dylan Pushed Me Past My Comfort Zone”: The 13X Grammy Winner Behind The Big Lebowski Soundtrack from How I Built This. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hello, this is Guy Raz , and welcome to Great Creators. Here I talk to some of the most incredible artists, musicians, and actors of our time. Today on the program is the legendary 13- time Grammy Award winner, T- Bone Burnett. T-Bone Burnett is one of those super producers, like Quincy Jones or Rick Rubin. The list of artists he has worked with is simply staggering. People like Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Elton John, Counting Crows and many others. T-Bone has also created some of the most memorable film and TV soundtracks of all time.

So today on the program: how T-Bone manages to do all this and why he believes he creates his best work when he's already over 70. So, let's begin. Enjoy my conversation with 13-time Grammy winner, T-Bone Burnett. I know your wife calls you Henry or Hank, but most people know you as T-Bone, right? Yes, my wife and close friends call me Henry, so you can call me Henry if you want. But T-Bone is what everyone... I mean, it's the name you... Tell me about that name, how you got it, because you were born Joseph Henry Burnett III.

Yes. It happened in the Fort Worth, Texas area when I was about six or seven years old, somewhere like that. I got the name T-Bone. I think they called me Bone because I was really skinny back then. And there was another Bone, a guy named Carl Wade, also known as... the Bone from our block. From the next block, yes. So somehow I became T- Bone. And it's a name that I've been trying to get rid of for years, because right next door, in Dallas, lived T-Bone Walker, probably the best, one of the best blues guitarists, one of the best guitarists in general.

And I didn't want to look like an imitator, you know, like Frank Sinatra Jr. or something like that. So, it's just one of those names you can't escape. It's interesting because it's like a part of me, it sounds like the name of a cool guy. It seems like it , right? It seems like you had—I mean, you had a kind of, maybe, "cool guy"—that's not exactly the right image, but you...I mean, in your youth you definitely had your moments, you were a rebel and you had a reputation for it .

But, but, were you, or did you, I mean, did you justify it? I mean, were you quiet as a child? Were you rebellious? What do you remember about yourself as a child? Well, I was both of those things. Yes, I was both quiet and rebellious, and I can tell you that 40, 50 years in the music business has made me pretty hardened. So I had, um, and early in my life I was very disappointed. You know what they start with, they start telling you lies from the very beginning.

They start telling you about Santa Claus and all that stuff , and So yeah, I have to admit now, looking back, because a lot has changed for me , but looking back, I was cynical. People always said that my lyrics were cynical, and I always rejected, I always resisted that characterization of my work, because, because I thought it was more, I thought it was sincere, you know ? I thought, I thought I was fighting for...Well, I still think, I thought, and I still think I was fighting for humanity, you know, in the face of the technological onslaught that wanted to turn us into cyborgs and so on, you know.

Um, T-Bone, I know you, I know you grew up in Fort Worth, as you mentioned, mostly in the 50s and early 60s. Um, tell me a little bit about how you got introduced to instruments. I know you had Cole Porter at home, and you, you know, your parents had a record player, and you listened to Louis Armstrong. How is it, how is it, you know, and you grew up at a time when rock and roll was actually born, right? I mean, it was the 50s, early 60s, that's when all this was coming out.

Did you feel a connection to rock and roll right away? Do you remember this as a child? I felt it, yes. I felt it , I felt many of the same emotions. Fort Worth at that time was a significant part of the military- industrial complex. So there were B-52s, well, there was General Dynamics, and there was Carswell Air Force Base. And there, B-52 planes flew and circled over the city for days. And, um, that created a low ceiling in the city. It seemed like the only options for the future were to go work for General Dynamics, or in the oil business, or something along those lines.

And none of them were interesting, but I remember hearing Jerry Lee Lewis when I was, like, I don't know, nine years old, something like that . Radio, just simply playing on the radio? Heard it on the radio, then took out the record and was rolling on the floor laughing to "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." Did you laugh? I laughed because it was like that, it was just amazing, like that. Yes. Yeah, it was like music from another planet or something. It was, it was, it was freedom.

And, you know , years later, years later, I recorded a guy called the Legendary Star Cowboy, which was a very similar explosion of just unbridled energy. There, I mean, there were obvious differences between them, but there was something about them that had the same, the same undertone. Who were your parents, I mean, I know your grandfather was, I think, the secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention. And I saw... were your parents open to you listening to Jerry Lee Lewis and early rock and roll? Yes, there were.

You know, they weren't home often anyway. They both worked. I was, you could say, left to my own devices . But, you know, Buddy Holly was a real embodiment of that time for me, and I don't think anyone found anything too offensive about Buddy Holly. He was just undeniably good . He could sing, he could play, he could write songs. He recorded his own records. He truly became a prototype for all who came after him. What about Elvis? Yes, I've never been a fan of Elvis .

I thought he was funny, you know, I saw him, I remember he was on TV, and they would black out the bottom of the screen or something so you couldn't see him shaking his knees or whatever, "rubber legs," you know. So there was something scandalous about Elvis that I did n't really understand or accept. I understood Jerry Lee, but I didn't understand Elvis . Tell me, T-Bone, tell me like a kid, because you were a very talented golfer. I mean, you played golf in college and you still seem to be a pretty talented golfer.

As a guy who plays golf very well , tell me how you decided to pick up an instrument one day. How did this happen? You know, it's funny. I was at a golf tournament and, well, you know, my aunt, who I spent a lot of time with, played the piano, and she also had an accordion. So my first instrument was the accordion, which is interesting because it has buttons on the left for playing chords, and with your right hand you can try to pick a melody.

That's how I became fascinated with music, simply mastering it intuitively. But the guitar I fell in love with came about by chance: a beautiful little Gibson guitar was sitting against a wall in a house in Wichita Falls , Texas, during the Texas-Oklahoma Junior Golf Tournament . I walked over and, I remember, plucked the E string, wondering what it was , and it made a sound that I've been chasing ever since . Oho. Yes, it was, you know, a powerful resonance, and music is generally an interesting thing.

Every note you play on the piano contains within it all the other notes of the instrument at a certain volume. So you take a note, and that note itself is a sine wave. It's a pure, simple wave, but it gives rise to a whole series of overtones that create a harmonic structure . And when you take one note and then another, these two overtone structures begin to interact, starting their own dance. It was this world that interested me; That's what the guitar had—that body, that resonating space, that created this incredibly complex sound.

You remembered rolling on the floor laughing while listening to Jerry Lee Lewis. So there was something about this music that appealed to you on an instinctive level . You mentioned that E string on the guitar—a lot of kids at 12 see a guitar, strum the strings, and forget about it, right? But there was something more to that experience for you . You wanted to learn to play, and not just learn, but become a master. Yes, I wanted to find out what kind of mystical experience it was— hearing a sound that was more than just something you touched with your fingers.

Yes. How to explain this? What could explain this in a twelve-year-old child? I have no idea. I can't explain it, but I'm happy, I'm grateful for this experience. I can say that. This led me to a long life in music. So there was something prophetic about this for my life. So, you know, this is something I can't explain. I read that your mom bought you an inexpensive acoustic guitar from Mexico. That's right. And when you got this guitar, you couldn't let it go? Did you stay in your room all the time ?

Yes, essentially. Yes, I was always in my room anyway, but now I had a friend I could be there with . Yes. I was an only child. Yes. My parents both worked, so I would come home from school, we would play in the yard for a bit or something, and then I would have a few hours alone, and that's how I filled that time. It seems that one of your childhood friends was Stephen Bruton, with whom you later collaborated a lot. He's gone, of course, but he had an extraordinary career as a musician.

Tell me about your journey from loving the sound of the E string, learning to play the guitar, to wanting to form a band and pursue music. How was it? Have you listened to rock and roll or seen rock stars on television? Have you thought, "I want to do the same thing"? No, you know, I didn't think about becoming a rock star. It never occurred to me as a possible life path. But when Stephen and I were both 14 years old, we got jobs at T.H.'s music store.

Coan in Fort Worth, Texas. I was engaged in guitar restoration and sometimes gave lessons , although I could barely play myself, but I was invited for this, and Stephen worked there too. He was one of the most charming, perhaps funniest, guys I've ever met, and we developed a deep, lasting friendship. And it was quite natural to play together, since we both loved the guitar and were into music. He played in a bluegrass band called the Brazos River Ramblers. I guess you would call them a bluegrass band now.

It was n't really called bluegrass at the time. It was simply called mountain or country music. You know, his father had a record store called Record Town. His father was a jazz ... jazz professor, a drummer, right? Yes, a jazz drummer, a very good jazz drummer. Yes. And we ordered records from the Smithsonian Institution, folk records, and all these weird collections of that sort . Today you would be called a music geek. Yes, that's probably true. I guess we were both like that , and I liked it, you know, but it was more than just music.

It was the atmosphere. It was a lot of things. Doc Boggs, you know, when you heard Doc Boggs in those days, it was like hearing someone from another century, from another planet. Although it was actually recorded only a few years before. It seemed out of time. And Clarence Ashley, there were a lot of guys like that who were extraordinary musicians but had no connection to popular culture at all . They just played at home, wherever they were. It was a fascinating look into another world, it was a dream world, and I think that immersing myself in these worlds that they created was in many ways what drove me forward .

So, you started college at Texas Christian University but dropped out to pursue music. That is, at a certain point there you decided that this is exactly what you want to do, that you want to try to achieve success. Yeah, well, I was in the school band, and to get gigs, we went into the studio to record a record. And it turned out that the studio was being sold, and the sound engineer was a guy named Phil Yorke, who later worked on Willie Nelson's "Red Headed Stranger" album and a lot of other things.

A very good engineer. He said, "Well, why don't you buy it?" And I thought, " Well, that's a crazy idea." But a few of my friends and I bought it. A guy named Jim Rath—Jimmy Rutledge, Jim Rutledge, who later was the drummer in a band called Bloodrock, who had a hit song called "DOA" or something like that, where there was a siren, which got the song banned from the radio, but it was a hit anyway. So, we bought this studio, I started working there and managing it, and I had no time left to study.

Or Tell me, I mean, I just think of it as a business decision, right? For example, a studio. First, where did you get the cash to buy it? Well, we went to the bank. The three of us went to the bank, borrowed money, and convinced the banker to give it to us. Oho. It wasn't that much money. This is not the money that the studio later cost, you understand. Of course. Although I will say, as far as I remember, all the equipment we bought cost $20,000.

Today, this equipment would cost, I don't know, a million dollars or something. And who, and in Fort Worth, right? I mean, I'm sure there was some kind of scene there, but was there a community of artists there to support the studio? Yes, and yes, and no. There was a place called Panther Hall where country music artists would come every weekend. So Conway Twitty, Doug Kershaw or people like that would come, play a concert at Panther Hall, and then, at one o'clock in the morning, when it was all over, they wanted to do something.

So they would show up at the studio with a bottle of Crown Royal and a couple of fans, and we would stay up all night recording hillbilly music. Oho. And there was also a teenage music scene because, you know, The Beatles had just come out. Yes. This...we're talking about '65, '66. 65th, yes. Yes. And, you know, The Beatles were the first rock and roll band. They were the prototype. Before The Beatles, all rock and roll was performed by a singer with a backing band. That is, there was a frontman and three musicians.

The Beatles had four frontmen. And that really opened up, that fact opened up the idea of being a rock and roll band for my whole generation. So, okay. So you have this recording studio. You have a studio in Fort Worth, but you mentioned something earlier, you know, Fort Worth was a military town, and they produced the B-2 or the B-52 there ; and you said something that struck me. You said Fort Worth had a low ceiling. Literally—not literally, because every ceiling is the sky, but you felt that the ceiling was low, that this was such a place.

It seems like ever since you were a child or teenager, when you got into music, you knew you wanted to get out of there. I got out of there as soon as I could. Yes, it was...There's a great scene in the movie "The Last Show," which was filmed just outside of Fort Worth, in Archer City, Texas. Ben Johnson and Timothy Bottoms seem to be sitting on a reservoir, one of those old reservoirs in Texas, you know, where the dirt on the bank is covered with hoof prints .

The dirt was gray, and the reservoir was gray, and a narrow strip of mesquite trees on the other side of the reservoir, and then the sky was gray, and the clouds were gray, and Ben Jonson looks back and says, "Is n't it beautiful?" You know. And I felt it. You found beauty in it when you were there, and there really is something beautiful there. Fort Worth also had a really strong art scene, good museums, and the city supported music and art to a certain extent. But it seemed like the only hits coming out of North Texas back then was one big hit by Bruce Channel called "Hey Baby." And there were a few songs, J.

Frank Wilson, I think, had a song called " Last Kiss" about a guy who died in a car accident. But it all seemed like new things, and there was no successful recording industry there. Yes. And everything I loved seemed to come out of either London or Los Angeles, a little bit of New York, but Los Angeles at that time was the Mecca for what was then called the music business. Yes, and, of course, to some extent he still is . But it's interesting, because when you started, everything was much more scattered.

Well, there was a scene in Memphis, there was a scene in New Orleans, there was a scene in Chicago and. And you could, I mean , there was a world where you could create a sustainable business doing this, but of course you wanted to move to Los Angeles. Ahem. But each of these scenes had its own patron, so to speak, who could attract resources in that city, but it still remained a handicraft. It wasn't like the powerful scene that was in Los Angeles or New York.

You know, in Detroit there was Motown, which was Berry Gordy and his group of extraordinary musicians and singers. And he had the vision to bring it all together into what became an important label. Jim Stewart was in Memphis . And in New Orleans—Allen Toussaint and Marshall Seehorn. So, they all clustered around one person or several people who created them. This was not the case in Fort Worth. Did you see yourself primarily as a guitarist, singer, or producer, or all of these at once? I saw myself primarily as a producer and songwriter .

You know, I liked the idea of ​​being an independent producer. I remember when I left Texas Christian University, I told my dad that I had decided to become an independent music producer, and he asked, "What is that?" Well, you know. Yes. Nobody, nobody knew. Yes, I know. That was a fair question. But no one knew. Including me. I did n't know what it was either. I knew Phil Spector was like that, and that was pretty much all I knew. Yes. But I thought…You know, what I knew about corporations was General Dynamics.

It was the main corporation in the city. By the way, there was also a strategic base of the Strategic Air Command, the SAC base, as they called it, was in Fort Worth. And, um, it was such a mysterious life choice. But I thought it was a way to get out of the city and into those worlds where all this music seemed to be being made and all this collaboration was happening. It's interesting because there are so many people, and we had people on the show with similar stories.

They are going to Los Angeles. You know, someone in their 60s, someone in their 70s or 80s. And in almost every case, the goal is to go and become a star. And your example wasn't pop singers. It was Burt Bacharach. It was like you wanted to be him. Yeah, it was...well, I just thought it was...I didn't want to be...I wasn't comfortable performing. I never considered myself a performer. And I didn't want to be one. But I longed for a creative life. And I liked the idea that Burt Bacharach had Dionne Warwick, he wrote...so he had this wonderful singer, and before her—Marlene Dietrich .

And he wrote, and before her, before Dionne Warwick, he had a guy named Lou Johnson, extraordinary, played organ at a club in Dallas called the Green Parrot. And we went to look at him. He was a terrible drug addict, you know, probably, I'm sure, he's gone now. Back then he played the organ and pounded out the bass on the bass pedals with the drummer, and it was an absolutely fascinating band of those two guys. They were simply incredible. But this is a digression, I thought: Bacharach has it...he can write such beautiful music.

He can arrange it, record it, and then have a singer come out and sing it for him. He doesn't have to do it himself. You know, Harlan Howard once said, "Son, you can either write 10 songs and find a bus, a truck, a band, a manager and a sound system. You can go on tour and promote those 10 songs , or you can write 10 songs and find 10 guys with 10 buses and 10 sound systems." And I thought, "Yeah, there 's wisdom in that, you know." Yes.

If you think about people like Burt Bacharach and Phil Spector , and then you at the time, they're kind of like proto-super producers , right? Like today's famous DJs who started in the early 2000s, like David Guetta or Calvin Harris. And suddenly, you know, they went from just guys spinning music to " DJ David Guetta featuring Rihanna or Beyoncé." And that really changed everything, and I think Burt Bacharach was, in fact, the embodiment of that. He was the one who actually created this idea. Well, that's true.

You know, at some point the record player just became another musical instrument. So these guys—they're creators and producers, you know. Yes. So, you came to Los Angeles, and how did you make your way? So, you came as an unknown guy from Fort Worth, right? And, apparently, people in Los Angeles got the impression that you were some kind of provincial or country boy. You know what people are like in Los Angeles. Well, you know, the first day I got to Los Angeles, I went with my friend Charlie Carey, who had been there before.

He was a rockabilly singer in the 50s in Fort Worth. We went there and ended up in a place in the San Fernando Valley called the " Plantation." Mhm. It was a house situated on a lot of about an acre or two, where two or three houses stood. There was a constant jam session going on in that house, and it was like that every day. Only the musicians lived there, not exactly a commune, but they shared the apartment as neighbors. I walked in and the first thing I saw was the Taj Mahal, Wow.

Bonnie and Delaney, Jesse Ed Davis, Chuck Blackwell played drums, Carl Riddle played bass. There was a whole extraordinary crowd there, mostly from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Well, and a few other guys from Texas. We all liked the same music, and I owe a lot to Charlie for taking me with him and introducing me to those people, because it opened up a path for me to the local culture. And that's kind of how you met people over time, and did they ask you to be a session musician for them, or did they say, "Hey, come and produce my music"?

How, tell me, how did it start? Well, you know, at that time I was trying to write songs for others. But yeah, sometimes I got called to play, I played piano on a few sessions. I played guitar on some of the recordings. There was this producer, a great songwriter and producer named Daniel Moore, who wrote a couple of hits in those days, one called "Shambala" and another called "My Maria" for B.W. Stevenson, I think. He was very generous with me and often invited me to play on sessions.

He, you know, fed me when I was...well, I lived to some extent on the kindness of other people back then. You know, I've been reading about it, and we can't cover all the details of your life because the number of people you've worked with is just mind-boggling when you explore your life. But I'm thinking about this period of your life. You were almost like, I mean, what would we call it now, AI, you were just absorbing information and becoming this person, right ? You just spent time with Janis Joplin or Albert Grossman, who worked with her, then you met Sam Shepard, the playwright, then Taj Mahal, and then Bob Dylan.

There were so many different influences coming into your world, and I wonder if you could explain how that started to shape the music you were making, the music you wanted to make. Well, first of all, the only way you'll be remembered is by your work. So I did, I did a good job. I tried to do a good job and pay attention to what was quality, and when I saw a good drummer like Jim Keltner, who became a friend of mine around 1967 or so. He then worked with Dylan, John Lennon, George Harrison, and, you know, he's still playing.

He's still great, and he's Ringo ...I'm working with Ringo Starr now, and Ringo says Keltner is his idol. So I'll tell you what I think was the main reason. I always wanted to be the worst musician in every band I played in. Because I was constantly learning, you know, other people make you raise the bar. Yes. I understand what you mean . You didn't want to be the worst, of course, but you wanted everyone else to be better than you so you could learn from them.

Yes, that's right. So, I've always been open to learning. And I have to say, I didn't know anything when I got there, when I found myself in Los Angeles. It was, I mean, it was all total darkness for me . I mean, you toured with Bob Dylan and played with Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. This is just the beginning of your career at that time. Um, tell me what you remember about this, because this is, well, this is a serious thing, right? It was the same Rolling Thunder Revue , and you performed there.

You're on stage with Bob Dylan. Um, how did you learn to be an artist? You know, if I, if I risk seeming even more pretentious than I actually am. No, not at all. Um, I think I was very uncomfortable on stage, and I think Bob Bob knew that. Bob has an extraordinary sense of hidden talents. And during the second round of Rolling Thunder, he started pushing me forward because I was sitting back the whole time. I just hung around somewhere in the back, trying to be inconspicuous.

And I had a seven-minute song called, uh, " Sashiko" or "Silver Mantis." It was me playing it on the piano. And he, about two- thirds or three-quarters of the way through his performance, took off his guitar, picked up the bass, and introduced me and this song. And he made me play this song in the midst of this incredible tension that he created in an hour or two. And I had to absorb that attention and that tension. And that was the best performance lesson I ever got, because I felt some of what he feels when he plays.

But you know, Bobby Neuwirth, there's this guy, Bobby Neuwirth. Are you familiar with him? Yes, tell us about him for those who don't know about him . Well, Neuwirth was part of the Cambridge folk music boom, or the scare, as Martin Mull called it, in the late 50s, early 60s, and became Dylan's confidant and friend from the very beginning. He is in the movie "Don't Look Back. " He was kind of a Friday the 13th Bean man, you know. And, um, he was with Janis Joplin, he was with Jim Morrison, he was with Kris Kristofferson.

He wrote, "Lord, will you buy me a Mercedes-Benz?" And he was an extraordinary artist and songwriter , a truly great songwriter . And there was, there was about two or three years when he lived in Laurel Canyon, just two houses down from Burt Bacharach and Angie Dickinson on Lime Orchard, that's what the street was called. And, um, every night we went to the Troubadour, and at the end of the night we would take everyone who was at the club home, and we would play music and sit in the living room and play for hours.

It was Warren Zevon, Don Everly, Willie Nelson or Roger Miller, you know, a whole bunch of such unusual, mostly songwriters . And we always exchanged songs . And New Earth was the first one to really push me. He said, "Play your new song, okay?" He was encouraging me, and I, you know, I was just terrified of the thought of playing a song in front of Don Everly, you know? This, this seemed so far away from me, from that Don Everly whose songs I grew up listening to.

I mean, when did they start? In 57? In 56 ? In 57? Somehow so. All these songs, like " Bird Dog," were my anthems back in elementary school, you know? So he, you know, he was putting you in an awkward position. New Earth always, like Dylan, put me in an awkward position, New Earth did it on a smaller, uh, smaller scale, but that's where I learned everything I know about performing, probably in that living room. When you are pushed out of your comfort zone. Very, very far outside my comfort zone.

Yes, I mean, explain that. Yes. I'm a listener, you know, I've been a listener my whole life . I like to listen, and, uh, I do n't really like being listened to. This is strange. This, this, this is probably some kind of psychopathy or something, if that word is even appropriate. So, I mean, imagine , you listen to the Everly Brothers as a kid, and then, 10 years later, you find yourself in the living room playing for Don Everly himself. It must have been exciting and scary, but when you're forced to do it, you just have to do it, and probably everyone in the room, you know, no one said, "Oh, that was horrible." No, no, we would, it would, they would, it was always pretty good, you know.

The songs were good. Yes. I wasn't a good performer. Public speaking is a gift that was not given to me. I mean, I got to the point where I could do it pretty well, but I also had a mentor, a guy named Johnny Stroud, an interesting guy. He graduated from Stanford at 17 with honors, was asked to work on the Manhattan Project, but refused on moral grounds and wrote a program for a space station as a response to the nuclear bomb. And when I met him, he was a systems analyst at the Rand think tank in Point Mugu, California.

And one of my close friends from school married his daughter. So we would come to his house and sit at his feet for hours while he essentially lectured us. He told us stories. He explained how science works, he told you , you know, why he had such extensive knowledge. But he was very skeptical of public performers and he just said, you know, public performance is not... I guess my grandfather, who would have been the same , you know, my Southern Baptist grandfather would have thought, no, don't put your name on that billboard.

Are you out of your mind ? Um, there were times, a few times in your career, when you, and I'll ask about this another time, but you kind of left music or dropped out of it for a while. And I think, probably for a good reason, and it was helpful, but in the late 70s you left Los Angeles, went back to Texas, and stopped making music for a while. You started working on a novel. Yeah, I started writing a book, and I'm still, you know, it's funny how that book took on so many different forms.

But it was a way to try...I've told this story before, in these last few weeks, but when I was 12 or 13, I learned about Ivan Pavlov and his... His dogs. with dogs, bells and everything else. And the implications of this were immediately clear to me: the experiments he had conducted in 1905 in Russia were being conducted in 1955 in Fort Worth, Texas. That these experiments in behavior modification were being conducted on our culture as a whole. And now it was done electronically . We were, you know, we were conditioned, electronically conditioned to behave in a certain way to try to keep us in check.

I think that was a big part of the appeal of rock and roll. It was a break in programming, electronic programming. It was the use of electronic programming to hack the system itself. And most of it, in fact almost all of my work, has been written on this topic. And Johnny Stroud, the man I was just talking about, was very knowledgeable about all of this . But after years of studying Pavlov as a teenager, I dreamed that we were all lined up along the walls of the parish hall of my Episcopal church, and in the far corner stood some shadowy figures who had cut off everyone's right hand and replaced it with an electronic one, which became their control mechanism.

And I woke up, I was already playing the guitar. So I would wake up in a cold sweat, you know, screaming in my sleep, “They can’t take my hand. I have to get out of here , you know." And that became the main focus of my work—to resist it, to try to warn other people, because I saw it coming, very clearly. Not only I, but also Aldous Huxley, whose works I became acquainted with shortly thereafter, certainly saw this. Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, who was a prominent French sociologist, wrote about this.

Neil Postman, you know, Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon. There was a lot of art and opinions that said the same thing . So it wasn't like I was a visionary or anything like that . It was just something that came to me. And it was a real obsession. So I decided to write a book about it. It was called...and I'm still working, actually I'm still working on that story. It took many different forms. I started writing this book about three times and threw it away because I got too depressed, really.

But you know, years later, probably around the turn of this century, I walked into a Starbucks or a coffee shop, and everyone in the coffee shop was looking at their phones, and I realized, "Oh, they didn't have to cut off our hands. They just put it in our hands." And at that moment I thought, “Okay, we’re here. We are in the place I have feared all my life. So, it's time to end this. Whatever it is, I want to stop writing about it . I want to stop living in this .

I want to stop fighting this. I want to move on. I want to go through this." And then I realized, there's an interesting book by Ian McGilchrist called The Master and His Messenger, where he suggests that humans sang to each other, like dolphins or whales, thousands of years before we invented the technology of language. The consequences of this were immediately obvious to me : we invented language so we could lie to each other, because when we sang, it was a solid, pure tone. And everyone knew what the other meant.

So, to be able to keep secrets, we invented language. And that was the beginning of my escape from dystopia, because I realized: oh, I've been a listener my whole life. This is who I am. I am a listener, and I hear the tone. So I can escape this dystopia through listening. And through the perception of tone. And when I did it, I was able to. I escaped from a dystopia. That's when all these songs from the album just flowed to me, because they were all in a new tone.

They were all about something new for me, something different. I'm curious, of course you eventually returned to music, uh, after that short hiatus. But I'm curious, since we can't talk about everything, all of yours, which is an incredible, fruitful life, and the people you've worked with, I'm curious to learn about faith, specifically Christianity, because I know it's influenced some of your music. And I don't know what your relationship with faith is now, or today, but at certain points in your life and career, it has influenced what you write about, right?

Yes, I think it has always influenced what I write about, and continues to influence it. Perhaps now more than ever, because I have been freed from the obligations of being some kind of savior or whatever, or however I perceive my responsibility as a person of faith. But for me, it all fell apart. That is, I am full of faith. I would say so. That's why when we started, I talked about how disappointed I was because I was lied to about Santa Claus, because I believed him, because they made me, they made a fool of me , you know, and it made me angry.

I'm still angry about it. Not really, but, uh, but yeah, I think, first of all, I think life is a religious issue. Uh , I don't think there are religious answers. I don't believe there is one religious answer that encompasses all of life. Uh , but I, I really, I believe that life is important, I guess that's an easy way to say it, and we should encourage life, uh , and be grateful for it. Or, do you think it's a bit of a cliché, isn't it, that as we age, many of us often become closer to a faith that we may have rejected in childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood?

Um, but I, I'm wondering, in your case, is that true? Do you feel, that is, No. No. No, I don't, I don't feel any closer to that. I feel like I know, I know something about this that I didn't know before. Uh, I learned a lot. I, I mean, of course, today you see what's happening with what they call the far-right Christians, the Christian nationalists. You know, I never understood Nazi Germany. And because many people in Germany at the time viewed their movement as a Christian movement, and I could never understand that.

Now I understand it. I mean, it's clear, it's clear now in our culture. Uh, but that's why I, I know more about it . But I also, I also embrace Buddhism and Zen Buddhism and the complexities of life much more openly. I, I much more, I welcomed the complexity, instead of trying to reduce everything to scripture or something like that. Um, tell me a little bit about, um, your work, I want to ask you about a few specific projects you've worked on. I want to ask you specifically about the legendary Los Lobos record, which came out in '84, I think, right?

Um, like a wolf, how will a wolf survive, or how will a wolf survive? The song was "Will the Wolf Survive?" Yes. Um, it was, I mean , a mega-record in 1984 , considered one of the best records of the year, winning Grammys and all sorts of other awards. Um, but that was a tough project you got involved in. I don't remember it being difficult. I, I remember incredible, I remember a lot of great moments with those guys. And David Hidalgo is definitely one of the best musicians I've ever worked with , and they're all soulful guys.

It was, it was an interesting time, because there was a punk rock scene in Hollywood at the time. And they came from playing mostly norteño, cumbia and things like that. They were an acoustic folk band that picked up electric instruments, and, um...I'm sure even earlier. I mean, David Hidalgo is a great blues guitarist. And I believed that a lot of soul music came from people who came from the South, you know, whose lineage came from across the Rio Grande River. Um, but I, I thought they were an important band, and they were tearing up, you know, he, he's a great singer.

Cesar is a wonderful singer. You know. Conrad Lozano is a wonderful guy. They're all, they're great guys, and I've really enjoyed this collaboration. Like you, I mean, whether it's Los Lobos or Robert Plant or, you know, anyone you've worked with: k.d. Lang, Tony Bennett. How do you, when you're in the studio, start to uncover people? I mean, there's a famous story—I don't know if he actually did it —Brian Eno had that deck of cards, you know, that people would play with, saying, "Okay, everyone switch places.

Now you're a drummer, and you're a guitarist." Like, what are the things you do or have done in the studio to get people to be really real? Well, you know, there was a time, you know, you could do simple things, like what you mentioned with Eno, like, for example, making everyone play through one amplifier. Yes. So instead of everyone playing through separate isolated amplifiers, listening to themselves in headphones, everyone has to listen to everyone. So , mostly, I mean, in general, the method that I use is to get everyone in a room where everyone can hear everyone.

And walk around until I hear everyone, and then listen very carefully. You know, music is largely about listening. 90% of gaming is listening, the same goes for producing records . I mean the wide range of artists you've produced: Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, Diana Krall, Elton John, The Corrs, Counting Crows, Jacob Dylan. It was a huge, simply huge album from '94, a Jacob Dylan album. But also Brandi Carlyle...I could go on and on, but it's interesting that you're known primarily for film soundtracks, especially your work with the Coen brothers.

Well, working with the Coen brothers has become the most valuable thing in my life. I have to admit it. How did it happen? After all, “ Where Are You, Brother?” is an incredible film, largely thanks to your work. How did you come to this ? Well, you know, we already worked together on The Big Lebowski. Yes. This was their first film with a soundtrack. And I met...I worked with I probably sound like a terrible braggart, but that's my life. So I'll just tell you how it went .

I worked with Sam Shepard on the play "The Tooth of Crime" in downtown New York. And he was about to have a play premiere on Broadway, for the first time in his life. It was called " Buried Child". He and I went to the premiere of, what do they call it on Broadway? I don't know. In short, we arrived and were met at the entrance by Fran McDormand and Joel Cohen. They had just gotten their tickets and were going inside, so we went together and Joel said, "T- Bone, we're making a movie with a soundtrack, do you want to be a part of it?" I replied, “Of course.

When? How soon can we start? Do you understand? Because I really loved...first of all, I liked their movie "Just Blood." It was filmed in Texas . Such a great movie. Such a good movie. So cool. It was filmed in Texas and my childhood friends were on the crew, so it felt like a home movie. And I've watched Raising Arizona probably 30 times. It's an amazing movie. Yes, these guys are simply the best of the best. And, uh, that's why I was thrilled to be considered for a collaboration with them at all.

I liked in Raising Arizona how they took "Ode to Joy" and used a Pete Seeger arrangement with whistling and banjo and all that. Yes. Yes. And another friend of mine, Jon Crowder, did it for the film. And, uh, we started working on that film and had a great time. And I sent one of the songs, I sent it to them for "The Dude" because he was an epic hero. I I I sent them a song, I sent them the song "Man of Constant Sorrow." Mm. And they didn't want her for "The Dude," but when we went on to the next movie we did together, it was, uh, "Oh, where are you, bro?" She was perfect for that epic hero, you know, the character of Ulysses, Ulysses McGill, I think that was his name.

And this is the famous scene where they record that song. Yes. In the studio, with that microphone, that hanging microphone . Yes. John Turturro and... of course, it's so good. Yes. I love...that...I will always love that movie and that whole experience. I'll always be grateful to Clooney for being so generous that, you know, basically, on the one hand, you could say, he starred in a music video for all this Gilby music. By the way, I still can't listen to "The Eagles" without remembering "The Dude" talking about how much he hates "The Eagles." Well, a lot of people hated The Eagles back in the day.

So funny. Uh, and I mean, you had this partnership with them , I mean, you did "To Kill a Mockingbird" and " Inside Llewelyn Davis." Uh, you know, how do you...I mean, how do you think, especially in movies, how do you feel about the role of music? I mean, the music in these movies, especially in " Llewelyn Davis" or "Oh, Where Art Thou, Brother?", it's so important. This...this... without music, a film simply doesn't exist. This is a key part of everything. Right? This is what you go to see a movie for, besides the story itself.

Yes, that's a character in the movie. Character, right? Thank you. And, you know, I...I do n't even know how I approach this exactly. The one thing I believe in above all else is that if you add music to a movie or TV show, it has to be great. You know, we don't need to add bad music to the culture. So even if the script says the song should be bad, it should be wonderfully bad. It has to be a bad song that's also funny, smart, or whatever, you know.

But it has to have something to be perceived as a full-fledged song. I'm curious. I saw your performances. I heard you singing. You have a beautiful, simply wonderful voice. And do you ... or do you mostly... I don't know, when you think about yourself and what you do, do you consider yourself a songwriter? Do you consider yourself a producer- arranger? Someone who elevates other people's work, or maybe all of them together? Well, I consider myself a producer and a songwriter , I would say, first and foremost, you know.

Not a singer. No, I don't consider myself a singer, although, uh, I'm starting to...I'm starting to gain some objectivity about my singing at this late stage in life. In my 70s or so, which is great. Better late than never, as they say, you know. Why do you think it took so long ? I don't know, because, you know, I just never...I had so much respect for the singers that I loved, and I knew that I couldn't sing like that, and I still can't . I can't...

you know, I loved... like Ray Charles, I knew I could never sing as well as Ray Charles. I loved Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, those guys, and I knew they sang with a depth that I couldn't reach. And Billie Holiday, and you know, I think because I could hear...I didn't consider myself a singer because I could hear myself singing and I knew it wasn't as good as Billie Holiday. Although, although, I think I'm getting closer to that. Although I think on this new record, sometimes I wonder, I think there's something of Billie Holiday in it.

So, tell me about your creative process, okay? Because I think this is...I could be wrong, but by my count, this is your 14th studio album that you've been involved in... at least the 14th. Um, this new record, "The Other Side." Um, tell me how you...what's your process? How do you...how do you write songs and lyrics for your records now? How is this...What... Tell me, yeah, walk me through it. Before this album, every record, every song I wrote, was influenced in some way by this dystopia that we're living in now, this electronic dystopia.

For this record, I started writing songs for other people . I was, I was at a poetry reading, Ringo Starr was there, we met, and he said, "Why do n't you write a song for me ?" And I thought: " Yes", I said: " Of course", I said: "I will definitely write, immediately". Thinking about Ringo, I remembered that he was Ringo Starr because in his youth he wanted to be a cowboy singer. And I knew he wrote to the Houston Chamber of Commerce and asked for Lightnin Hopkins' address because he wanted to move to Houston and be closer to him.

So I decided to write him a song in the style of Gene Autry—it's the song "Come Back," which is on this album, and which I think you heard me sing in Arizona a while ago. And I love it, it's a beautiful song, and it, it was written very easily when I was writing for Ringo. So I thought: I'm here in Nashville. There is music everywhere here . There are so many singers and songwriters here. I should start writing regularly for other people. I did, and the songs started coming out very quickly once I stopped writing about dystopia or writing from a dystopian perspective.

And within a few weeks, I had a group of songs that I started recording demos for, so to speak. And when I was recording them with Colin, my friend Colin Linden, I realized that it sounded like an album. They are whole. There is something about these songs that unites them. So I still continue to do it . I wrote yesterday. I will write later today. And I write with friends. I write with a guy named Daniel Tashian. I don't know if you know him. I produced his first record a few years ago.

He now writes and produces with Kacey Musgraves, and they make extraordinary records. I think one of their albums won "Album of the Year " a couple of years ago. I write, you know, I write with Molly Tuttle and with a lot of younger, a lot of young musicians and singers. And I really like it. So, it was, it really came from that very idea that I was going beyond myself and that story that you mention. And it's like the beginning of a new life, I'm finally becoming something like Burt Bacharach, writing for other people.

I mean, it's so cool to be able to say, "Okay, I'm in my 70s, and I'm just getting into my groove." This is really cool. Although it is true. I'm just getting into my rhythm, and I'm also working out a lot because I want to take good care of myself. So now that I'm doing it, it's a whole new life. Maybe I'll create a whole new library. Um, well, tell me , I mean, you mentioned that you always wrote through this dystopian perspective. You wrote, you started writing for other people.

You mentioned Ringo Starr. So initially the idea was : I'll write songs for other people . What other themes are you exploring on this record? You know, I did n't really write about a specific topic. These songs, I have to say, well, I guess they're inspired. They come, they appear. They appear in my hands on the guitar, like the song "He Came Down," which is the first on this record. Kelly and I, I worked on... Kelly Curry, a famous director, yes. Yes, a screenwriter, a very great screenwriter.

Well , one morning I was practicing my guitar and writing a song, and she came in and asked me something over coffee, I think about Appalachian music. I don't remember exactly what the question was, but I said, "Well, it's something like that." And I sang the first few lines of "He Came Down ." Just bang, just sang. And she said, "Write it down immediately." Oho. And I said, "Record what?" And she replied: "Write down what you just sang." So I thought, "Okay, what did I just sing?" And I did it.

I turned on the phone. I wrote down a few lines. And then I realized, "Oh, this is fun." "I want to develop it, I want to get to the bottom of it." You know, I realized I was writing a mythological song about these mythological characters. And I wanted to, you know, who else can I find to write about him ? Because what I liked most about it was the idea that he went down. Where did he come from? Did he come down from the mountain? Did he come down from heaven?

Did he go to hell? Did he get off his high horse? Is he "off" drugs? What does it mean that he went down? Who is this? And who is he? Who is he? Is he the Christ? Is he human? Is he an angel, right? There are all kinds of ideas here. Yes. Do you think when you write, do you think in terms of story, in terms of visual connection to the music you sing? I think sometimes that's how it happens, yes. Yeah, I think there are a few songs on this album that are real story songs, and I realized when we were done with that group of songs that it was all really a story, a blurry or mystical one, but a story nonetheless.

And it's a story with a happy ending, which was very important to me. What do you do when you get stuck? When you feel like you can't move forward, you can't write something you 're happy with. Does this happen? This has to happen. I don't remember this happening. It must happen, but I probably just forget about it as quickly as possible. Maybe I'll go hit some golf balls or something. Do you just work through everything, and even if it's not great or perfect, you still write it, or, you know, I've adopted the Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan method of writing too much.

So, you know, if you can write 50 verses to get three. Of course. And you can take those lines, shuffle them around, and keep playing with it. And you see, it's almost like putting together a puzzle or something. It's incredibly interesting because you're using your brain to sort -- I'm using technological terminology now, but you're changing the order of things, and everything opens up to you. And when you do that, connections emerge that you never would have guessed, but here they are. It just happened, you know.

Do you think that because you are in your 70s, you are so prolific ? You just mentioned the young songwriters you collaborate with. And I think that kind of connection and spark inevitably makes you more creative, because like everything else , the more you do it, the more creative ideas you get, right? This is true. You are absolutely right. Yes. And what do you think, is this ... I don't even know. Do you feel like you've become, I don't know, even more creative now because you're doing it, because you're practicing?

Yes. Yes. And I feel like I'm better, meaning I know I'm better than ever. And you know, every songwriter thinks the last song they wrote is the best. And every artist thinks that the album they just recorded is the best of all. But, you know, in the case of Paul McCartney, it 's hard to say that, because he...how many great albums did he make? Or Bob Dylan? But in my case, I think, I mean, I know, because now I listen to myself. Mhm. I know I'm doing a better job than I did before.

It must be a wonderful feeling. I...I'm so happy. I have to say, one of the things that happened to me was cynicism after I found out that Santa Claus is a complete lie. I never believed in happiness. There's that great line in the movie "Tender Mercies" where Robert Duvall says this . He says, "I never believed in happiness." And I adopted it. I thought, "I won't let myself believe in happiness, because then I'll be happy and then I'll be crushed again." But now it's the only thing I truly believe in.

That's the only thing I think about, you know, I think you make your own choice to be happy. Yes. And I think that's what we should do. We should be happy and grateful for our lives. This is amazing, this must be an amazing epiphany, and it seems like it took you a while to come to this. All these many years, yes. Yes. T-Bone Burnett, thank you very much. It was nice talking to you. Thank you, guys. Great conversation. I hope we will have many more like this.

Hey, thanks for watching my conversation with T-Bone Burnett. His new album "The Other Side" is out now. If you want to see more conversations like this, hit the subscribe button so you don't miss a new episode. And, of course, first and foremost we are an audio podcast. So if you want to listen to our show, look for us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you usually listen to podcasts. Just type “Great Creators” in the search . I'm Guy Raz, and this was the Great Creators podcast for Built to Productions.

Thanks for watching, see you next week.